A major issue was whether the master had to allow the slave to marry and what rights the owner had over slave offspring. After a century of intermarriage among the few white families on the Cooper River, the Balls were kin to most of their neighbors. . 27 Feb 2023. Author, Edward Ball, takes on a monumental task of tracing not only the roots of his slave-owning family, but also those of the slaves. He is not the only person who must struggle to acknowledge evil done by family members in the past. Synopsis [ edit ] The author explores his family origins, dating to his English immigrant Through a combination of meticulous research, general understanding of the history of the times, and imagination, Ball tells the other story of slavery, the untold story from the perspective of the enslaved. I had a personal reason for reading this book. : as honestly as possible what the family had done, I might clear some space around our name, and around us. We felt Edward Ball was brave to tackle this topic, despite his unpopularity with his family and some readers. National/N.Y. Our book group discussed this last evening. Harrell described the case of Mae Louise Walls Miller, who didn't get her freedom until 1963, when she was about 14. It wasn't merely that Dad was a clergyman, though certainly that set us apart; but "our people" had once controlled a slave dynasty. The treatment of slaves in expansive, dynamic societies was likely to be worse than in more stable ones. A yellowing photograph of the Seven Oaks mansion used to hang in the hall of our house. By outward measure, no. In Charleston, I looked for a place to live, hoping to find a room in one of the old Ball houses. The same no doubt happened among black families as each drifted farther from the plantation. Business | WebM205. I (a white woman) found out that my great grandfather was the son of a black woman & white slave owner) that had worked and her family had worked on a plantation for decades. He finished high school in New Orleans and attended Brown University, graduating in 1982 with a B.A. WebOpen the settings menu. My father had a voice honed by cigarettes, an antique Charleston accent, and I liked to hear him use the old names. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. Between 1698 and 1865, close to four thousand black people were born into slavery under the Balls or were bought by them. At the end of the twentieth century, descendants of the plantation Balls would be spread across America. Did the plantations form part of my identity?. First there were stacks of papers, then boxes and But once the book went back in the bookcase, the dreams faded. at Seven Oaks (built in 1840) were the property of one of my mother's maternal ancestors, Michael Zehringer. In 1834, Charles N. Rowley, my mother's great-grandfather, married a Louisiana heiress, Jane Kemp Girault, who gave him control of her 2,200-acre He is not afraid to reveal the truth and this makes his "story" so authentic. The bank, he said, had acquired a mansion in the old section of the city after the owner defaulted on the mortgage. I, too, come from a southern family, and my ancestors also owned slaves. It is impossible for us to understand how anyone could think slavery was acceptable, but apparently it was at the time. I found this book on a $1 used book cart, but it was a real find! The workforce, whose names Meeting intersects Tradd Street. plantations, and where had their descendants gone? In his seventies and eighties, with pinhole vision, Isaac continued to get around town and took regular walks with a cane. Marie We can come up with numbers and I believe that I will note those numbers in the history I am compiling. At certain parts I was almost holding my breath reading because Ball makes you feel like you are on this quest with him, researching and discovering alongside him. The brutal deprivation of rights was expressed in the Alabama case Creswells Executor v. Walter (1860); the slave, said the court, had no legal mind, no will which the law can recognize. Ball follows the stories of these people over many years as the families dispersed. : Open the settings menu. I too am related to many descendants of slaves - in a certain part of the country - and this was never talked about in my family either. Maybe Charles believed that if he had remained in the United States he would have been persecuted for South Carolina law noted that the slave was not within the peace of the state, and therefore the peace of the state [was] not broken by an assault and battery on him. Conversely, when a slave assaulted a freeman, the latter often recovered from the slaves owner. Enter a name in the Playlist Name field (Example: TV) and delete all existing data and all spaces in the Playlist link This double search--at It must have been difficult, especially when he wasn't well received. Illustrated. I'm impressed by author Edward Ball's research into his family's past and even more impressed by his search for the descendants of the people that his family kept as slaves. another drawing room, bathrooms, and, on the top floor, three more bedrooms, baths, a laundry. WebSLAVES IN THE FAMILY. Dad grew up in the house where Isaac spent his last twenty years, and he had strong memories of the old man. It also helped be better understand the African-American experience. Every morning, I walked to the cobblestone block of 2 Rolls. I moved from New York back to Charleston to carry out the search. , Language Which the author is white, but I guess I expected more care with the descriptions, maybe if it was written more recently it would have better better in this sense. I heard about this book through reading Thulani Davis' MY CONFEDERATE KINFOLK, and I'm glad I followed up. '", Powerful. The New York Times Book ReviewGripping. The Boston GlobeBrilliant. The New YorkerA landmark book. San Francisco ChronicleEveryone should read and learn from this luminous book[Slaves in the Family] is not only honest in its scrupulous reporting but also personal narrative at its finest. San Francisco ChronicleOutside Faulkner, it will be hard to find a more poignant, powerful account of a white man struggling with his and his nation's past. The Atlanta Journal-ConstitutionMuch more than bare historyIt's the human encounters, and the live, breathing juxtaposition of past and present, that give [Edward Ball's] book its vibrancy and importance. Detroit Free PressA masterpiece . "Wambaw Elias was a Tory," Dad began. that preserved their property rights when they left to marry, and they affected the families they joined. .orange-text-color {font-weight:bold; color: #FE971E;}Enjoy features only possible in digital start reading right away, carry your library with you, adjust the font, create shareable notes and highlights, and more. This property has been passed down, and it has remained in my family for over four generations The land that weve inherited has kept my family together through generations, which is not typical for a lot of Black American families. : Op-Ed | In Slaves in the Family, Edward Ball recounts his efforts These ebooks can only be redeemed by recipients in the US. To judge from its place, the bank was once part of Comingtee and had been built by Ball slaves. "That's another of the family secrets," Dad said, smiling. In the slave days the rice fields lay at the edge of the river. And who were the Ball slaves? Down the main hall lay the best-kept room, the library. On the spine the words ''OF making many books there is no end,'' especially of books dealing with the American founders. Very interesting in understanding where each "side" was coming from. 2:22. Everyone, however far away, was 3 Oct 2022. Mantels, windows, and doors had been tossed up in the attic, evidently as each piece had broken off the old house. A second colonnade on the piazza supported a pediment, which gave the face of the building the look of a furrowed brow. He often put on a three-piece suit and ribbon tie, except in summer, when he pared down to starched shirts. Four French doors opened onto the piazza, which overlooked the street like an outdoor room. More determining than the law were the conditions of the society itself. Among Isaac's pleasures was playing the violin. When Isaac was born, Limerick plantation, thirty miles north of Charleston, was the largest of the Ball plantations, measuring 4,564 acres. Full content visible, double tap to read brief content. The marriage soured, but the plantation grew to 6,600 acres, with a slave population of 240. Learn how and when to remove this template message, "Edward Ball, Winner of the 1998 Nonfiction Award for Slaves in the Family", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Slaves_in_the_Family&oldid=1114331625, National Book Award for Nonfiction winning works, Articles needing additional references from May 2021, All articles needing additional references, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from May 2021, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 5 October 2022, at 23:57. He connected so well with Americans, and not at all with the Africans. stood against the curb to hold the thing in the air. So there are a lot of details that you have to wade through. children to join a faction of exiled Confederates. Could their families be found? OK well, here I am again with a whole list of books waiting on reviews. Should statues of slaveholders be taken down? Chose it as part of my Black History education. Such a fascinating book! Daughters born in the Ball households often kept their hand in the business. orders. and clearing. When the Revolutionary War reached the South, Wambaw Elias, instead of joining the American rebels, went to the British commander in Charleston, And it was interesting! The rule of coverture around. Where the slave was completely dependent on his owner, few laws existed beyond the normal rules governing any form of property; it was the owners responsibility to recover damages if a third party killed or assaulted either his cow or his slave. Isaac wrote poetry, though he never published it, perhaps because in his society the desire to publish was thought to be vain, a bid for attention. In North America, India, Rome, Muscovy, most of the Islamic world, and among the Tuareg a fundamental principle was that the slave could not own property because the master owned not only his slaves body but everything that body might accumulate. There were also one chemist, a priest, a banker, and a fashion model. The sightseeing boat pushed along while an amateur historian narrated, stoking our pride at the bygone world of the plantations. : Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 23 years ago. From time to time in his stories, Dad mentioned the people our family used to own. I decided I would make an effort, however inadequate and personal, to face the plantations, to reckon with them rather than ignore their realities or make excuses for them. It is an unprecedented family record that reveals how the painful legacy of slavery continues to endure in America's collective memory and experience. But even before that, it takes a lot of courage to even allow yourself to want to find this stuff out. New York Today, Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company. a tour of the river where the Ball plantations once stood and where their remnants still moldered on the banks. Any owner was free to sell husbands from wives, parents from children, and brothers from sisters. Job Market | Slaves in the Family (1998) is a biographical historical account written by Edward Ball, whose family historically owned large plantations and numerous slaves in South Carolina. The story of his slave-owning family, part of the weave of his childhood, was a mystery he could only partly decipher. He attempts to cover a very long time span--going back to 1660--which is both what makes it valuable to students of history and what makes it less accessible to those not already enthralled with the subject. It is a work about slaves in the family. For a hundred, then two hundred years, the Balls saved their jottings--ledgers, deeds, correspondence, receipts, and lists of slaves. I got a personal glimpse of the American Revolution, because the Balls had played a role in it--some of us fought for the British, some for independence. Sitting on her backporch, listening to her unfiltered, affectionate, loving even, reference shocked my young-adult-in-the-70s heart in such an explosion that I am pretty sure guilt will cover me for the rest of my life. From this place it is possible to see, far out in The rooms were moldering, the air thick and bacterial. History.com Editors. The subject matter deals with a very important part of American history. second floor was lined with more cypress, broken up here and there by fluted pilasters topped with Corinthian capitals. Some of the family the waters of Charleston harbor. Babylonian, Hebrew, Tibetan-speaking Nepalese Nyinba, Siamese, and American Southern slave Sadists, even psychopaths, who could not cope with their right of total dominance over another human being, might appear anywhere, as might kindly masters. At the other extreme, in the American South material conditions were sufficiently favourable to provide comparative comfort for both masters and slaves. Something went wrong. Preservationists called it the Branford-Horry House, after two of its former owners. WebSlaves in the Family Edward Ball 4.02 2,722 ratings360 reviews Journalist Ball confronts the legacy of his family's slave-owning past, uncovering the story of the people, both black Web(CNN) -- Between 1698 and Emancipation, the Ball family of South Carolina owned 235 plantations and close to 4,000 slaves. : New York: Oxford University Press. Eventually he It subtly challenges whites to revise self-serving views of the past 'Just when I thought nobody would play any dirtier than me': Chance surprises Blake Shelton with 'long game' strategy on 'The Voice' Season 23 Knockouts premiere, Like 'Clockwork': Legendary British actor's son mysteriously vanishes from 'American Idol,' in third resignation of Season 21, Ray Romano reveals that he had a stent put in his heart: 'I had 90% blockage', 'Air': Matt Damon, Chris Messina break down how they filmed movies explosive, hilariously vulgar phone call, The Weeknd's 'The Idol': Lily-Rose Depp transforms into 'nasty, bad' pop star in new trailer for controversial series. Ball is quite a good writer and manages to bring to life the dry facts he found in the records. The Civil War Real Estate | worked by thirty or forty field hands, to giant Click on the + button and choose the Add M3U URL option. This is the story of the author's research into his family's past as slave owners and slave traders. With the gift of the book, Dad seemed Does this item contain quality or formatting issues? Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video! As Isaac was losing his sight, Dad said, he used to shave with his eyes closed, The crop Between 1698 and 1865, close to four thousand black people were born into slavery under the Balls or were bought by them.In Slaves in the Family, Edward Ball recounts his efforts to track down and meet the descendants of his family's slaves. the water, Fort Sumter, the old defense bulwark built on all island at the entrance to the harbor. once again before my eyes. Its walls and mantelpiece, made from thick cypress, glowed like all old page. Old papers are beautiful things. I have tried without results to find more of their lives. , Sticky notes I feel like they should have been given at least equal time -- his white ancestors' history is essentially mainstream history, so why should we hear so much of it here? , Edward Ball, a descendant of Elias Ball, has written a nonfiction American saga. Unexpectedly, the 1755 Danish Virgin Islands Reglement prohibited separating minors from their parents. Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2022. Journalist Ball confronts the legacy of his family's slave-owning past, uncovering the story of the people, both black and white, who lived and worked on the Balls' South Carolina plantations. Finding that his family plantations kept extensive records, he traces slave families and individuals held by his ancestors. Some societies had much legislation on this topic, others practically none. If we did not inherit money, or land, we received a great fund of cultural capital, including prestige, a chance at education, self-esteem, a sense of place, mobility, even (in some cases) a flair for giving Let's just get on with it. The writing style initially is very well done, but I feel that by the end of the book, he may have been wrapping it up quickly. My great-grandma, Granny had stories. Soon Dad took my brother, , Screen Reader British slave owners family makes public apology in Grenada. As the first event in the Ball reunion fell apart, we clambered off the deck into the motorboats in twos and threes. How did they live? Considerable research has been done on the treatment of slaves, and the consensus is that, while the law may have spelled out the desired social standards of master-slave relations, it did not necessarily define the reality for any particular situation. The book was well written and I read it within a few days, as I found it difficult to put down. The Balls lived side by side with black families for six generations, but the story, as I knew it, was divided in two. When the Civil War ended in 1865, the family held many plantations, all of them on the Cooper River: The Blessing, Buck Hall, Cedar Hill, Cherry Hill, Comingtee, Dean Hall, Halidon Hill, Hyde Park, I wondered if I could stay focused all the way through because it seemed like it would be a tedious read and I wanted to really be able to give it the respect it deserves. This provision gave slaves an incentive to work as well as the hope of eventual manumission. Each plot was surrounded by a "rice bank," art earthen levee several feet high and perhaps two hundred yards long on four sides of the field. This is after the 54-year-old quit her job and paid 100,000 in reparation The pages smelled like wet leaves. 3 Oct 2022. Edward Ball is descended from one of the largest slaveholding families in the South. In the years before Isaac's birth, some I have very strong feelings when it comes to reparations, because my family received a form of reparations, says Patrice. To complete the legacy, I would try to find descendants of the slaves. Rather than responsible, I felt accountable for what had happened, called someone bought it. Elsewhere, when the state punished the slave, the sanction typically was more severe than for a free person. Learn more. Anyone white, European-Americans who has done some family history research that links them back to slave owning Southern families before the Civil War should read this book. 253 pp. Site Index | And it was not only "us," the families of former slave owners, who carried the baggage of the plantations. Edward Ball smashed down the barrier between the history that is spoken of, and the history that is real. WebHow did slavery shape the family life of the enslaved in the American South? Who were their loved ones? 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